State Sen. Pat Colbeck, R-Canton, believes the path to providing Michigan citizens with access to higher quality, lower cost health care has been cleared following Gov. Rick Snyder's signature into law of Colbeck's SB 1033 (Public Act 522 of 2014).

According to Colbeck, this legislation ensures that direct primary care services are not treated as insurance products by regulators. The direct primary care model enabled by Colbeck's legislation has been referred to by David Chase of Forbes.com as "Two parts Marcus Welby and one part Steve Jobs."

The new law assures physicians who adopt a direct primary care service business model that the administrative burden associated with insurance regulations will not interfere with their treatment of patients. Physicians who offer direct primary care services provide specified services for a monthly subscription fee that usually vary between $50 and $125 per month.

Typically, Colbeck said, these services include routine medical care such as office visits and basic tests and procedures. Consumers would also purchase a high-deductible health plan at reduced rates to cover those services not provided through their DPCS plan.

DPCS redirects the focus of health care away from government mandates, regulations and fee schedules back to the simplicity of the doctor-patient relationship. The enactment of this law comes on the heels of the release of a study of the impacts of DPCS by Seattle-based Qliance Medical Management, LLC.

In this study, Qliance reports that the adoption of DPCS as a component of employer-sponsored health plans resulted in a 20-percent reduction in health care costs, increased patient satisfaction and better care.

"The citizens of Michigan will have greater access to high quality, low cost health care as individual physicians, finally free of the insurance and hospital system bureaucratic monopolies can innovate and deliver high-value healthcare," said Tom Valenti, founder and partner of Forthright Health.

The legislation is the centerpiece of Colbeck's "Exploit then Repeal" strategy regarding the Affordable Care Act. This strategy seeks to identify sections of existing law that can be exploited to promote free market health care solutions such as his patient-centered care solution. The adoption of this solution would "effectively nullify the need for the 159 new federal organizations erected between a doctor and patient under Obamacare," Colbeck said.

"As we pursue health care reforms, we need to protect the doctor-patient relationship," Colbeck said. "I do not want our citizens to be subject to the same anxieties around coverage or continuity of care that accompanied the rollout of Obamacare as we pursue its repeal. Patients enrolled in DPCS agreements at the time of the repeal of Obamacare will have no such anxieties."

For more information, go to the "Obamacare Alternative" section at www.MorninginMichigan.com.